Saturday, 19 March 2011

Evaluation question 7.

'Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to full product?'

This was the preliminary filming task from the group Becky was in.

This was the preliminary filming task from the group Hannah was in.

This was our very first filming task. Both of us were involved in the acting and editing of the micro-drama.

We know substantially more about creating a film now than since we first created a media product. We learnt that before you even come to brainstorming plot ideas, much research must be done prior to this. Our only research we did for our micro-drama, 'The Opposites', was looking at Vladimir Propp's character archetypes and trying to incorporate all of the characters into one short film. For our film opening 'Sleep Tight', we watched numerous openings of slasher and horror films and made notes on shot types used, mise-en-scene, editing, plot, sound and signifiers. We also made a note of who it was directed, produced and distributed by. This helped greatly as we were then aware of horror conventions and how to signify the genre to the audience. We drew upon the film openings we watched for inspiration for when we came to creating a film opening. Films that helped us to shape our film opening were Prom Night and When a Stranger Calls for the story line. Jennifer's Body showed us how to successfully film Point of View shots and have appropriate mise-en-scene for a girl's bedroom. We attempted to edit our photo inserts in a similar way to those in the opening of Eden Lake.

We had a lot longer time span to create Sleep Tight than we did to make the The Opposites and our preliminary task therefore we could adequately plan days for shooting and researching rather than trying to fit it all into a couple of days.

We worked as a team creating the film opening and we shared the roles of director, cinematographer and producer. When doing our preliminary tasks we worked in larger groups and therefore it was harder to split the workload equally.

We had a longer time to scout for locations thus meaning we had more appropriate filming location. We filmed at Becky's house which was ideal as it was a detached house and it reflected the family home look that we wanted. When we filmed our preliminary task, we only had a few classrooms in school to choose from.

We were able to get sufficient feedback for Sleep Tight which helped as it showed us points in which there was room for improvement. We did this in a number of ways. Firstly, we asked our media teachers to look at it and share how it was good and how it could be enhanced. This was the most constructive feedback as they know the marking criteria and therefore what level it is at. We also received feedback from friends and family of our age via social networking sites and from our classmates as the rough cuts were projected onto the board for viewing. This was helpful as they are the target audience and so we gathered information on why they did or didn't enjoy it. From this, we process we learned that we had to make the ending more clear as people did not understand that it was the same little girl but 7 years later. We didn't receive feedback on our micro-drama until after we finished it and handed it in. If we were able to get feedback then the end result would have looked somewhat better. We received feedback for our preliminary task. This was desperately needed and it meant that Hannah's group had to re-film theirs again as the 180 degree rule was not correct.